Time Inc. Layoffs; Mobile Cookie News

As the magazine publishing business continues to find ways to streamline and evolve to the "multi-platform" world, that will inevitably mean a lot of job cuts. That was the impetus behind Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang’s decision to layoff 480 employees -- 6 percent of its 8,000-person staff -- across most of its business units. In a company-wide memo obtained by Adweek’s Lucia Moses, the former Digitas executive told staffers, “We need to operate as smartly and efficiently as possible to create room for critical investments and new initiatives. These reductions are part of this important transformation process.” Read more.

Mobile Cookie

Display ad platform OpenX has teamed up with device recognition software provider AdTruth on an ad targeting solution for mobile real-time bidding. Read the release. After all, one of the major problems is the difficulty in tracking smartphone and tablet users through cookies. So the companies that can best direct their inventory towards the right audiences will be the ones driving ad spending in the space, as RTB growth rates generally slow down. As Mike Downey, VP of OpenX’s mobile solutions, explains in a blog post, “Essentially, AdTruth will fill the gap where cookies do not perform, ultimately resulting in increased ROI for the marketer.” Read more.

Data Quality, Not Quantity

Marc Guldimann, founder and CEO of first-party data provider Enliken, believes that the industry debate over “more data” versus “better data” is a false one. In a blog post on AllThingsD, he contends that despite gathering greater amounts of data through more tracking cookies placed on sites, analytics companies still can’t tell whether a user is male or female. His answer: “Instead of scraping as many touchpoints as possible, we could go straight to the source: The individual. Imagine the power of data from across an individual’s entire digital experience — from search to social to purchase, across devices. This kind of data will make all aspects of online advertising more efficient: True attribution, retargeting-type performance for audience targeting, purchase data, customized experiences.” Read more.

Teasing RTB

CEO Ed Montes of trading desk Digilant “teases” out his thesis about the transformative effects of real-time bidding (RTB) on advertising. He does see some downside, though: “1) the cost to deploy RTB effectively is significant, both from a hardware and human resource capacity and 2) RTB deployed without prophylactic computing power can lead to corrupt behavior.” Did he just say “prophylactic”? Read it.

Facebook’s CPG Pitch

A recent Facebook dog-and-pony show for CPG brands was the first of several upcoming events aimed at specific ad verticals. AdAge reports executives showcased the “Custom Audiences” CRM matching program, and despite CMO complaints about Facebook’s ad policies and some issues with sales strategy, brands were all ears. "I think the attitude is what matters, and they have that willingness to improve,” said Reckitt Benckiser Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Laurent Faracci. More.

Ad Inventory Force

In a post on Adrants, Joe Pych, CEO of software analytics firm NextMark, argues that ad tech vendors “force fit” ad inventory into a transaction process that ignores the human element that creates deals between buyers and sellers. Aside from the fact that agencies “make a ton of money” on reserved inventory buys the old-fashioned way, publishers remain nervous about giving up choice placements. “Publishers are certainly keen to streamline their workflow, lower their transaction costs,” Pych says. “However, they will never do that in an environment that commoditizes their inventory and creates channel conflict with their ad sales teams.” Read more.
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